As we wrapped up February, I mentioned the movers came and collected our stuff and we shifted over to a much smaller, furnished house. What I didn't mention is that at 6:00pm when the movers finally left, we packed up our car and headed north to Sugarloaf, ME to go on a family ski weekend. So just to recap, the movers left with all of our stuff after loading the semi tractor trailer all day and then we crammed the kids, luggage, coolers and food into my car and took off on a 5 hour drive to go skiing. Yes, for those of you who have no idea just how insane that is, IT IS CRAZY! The craziest part is we were trying to use the tetris-method to pack the car . I questioned Jim several times as to why we weren't taking his much bigger car to which he really didn't have a reasonable answer. What I should have been asking is why we were not using our new car top carrier that he was going to use later to drive to Miami. Yes, that is right, we thought of that after we were on the road for about an hour! In our defense, we were CLEARLY not in our right minds to be even attempting this... But .... It was totally worth going to Sugarloaf!! We got there on Friday morning and skied half a day basically by ourselves! The kids did great after a somewhat shaky start. Somehow we ended up on a "varsity" run (with all 3 kids) and I swear I thought we were going to have to hike down to the lodge. It was THAT bad. First Lilly ate it, then Lucy and then Ben. Lucy was the worse because she was so upset she couldn't get her skis back on and refused to even try. Jim and I had more than a few tense moments as well... All in all, it put a dark cloud over us, but luckily we were able to recover and enjoy the rest of our afternoon (on much easier runs). We signed up the kids for ski school on Saturday which enabled Jim and I to explore other parts of the mountain. We also had another family join us, so the kids were able to have some kid time and we in turn had some adult time. It was a win win!! We love Sugarloaf and did not want to leave!!
Here are a few pictures of the weekend.
Of course all good things must come to an end and with our last Rhode Island adventure behind us all we had left to do was graduate Jim and send him south to prepare the way for us in Miami. I have pictures of the day he left, but the kids look so sad I hate to put them in the blog. It was a major downer, to say the least. However, before he left he was able to treat the kids to one last fun day. We took them to an arcade and gave them each $20 to feed the machines in order to get tickets. The tickets in turn allow the children to "purchase" over-priced junk. (We are aware this is bad parenting -- sorry). I am sure you are all familiar with these types of establishments. Well Lucy is a lucky lucky girl. She wins all the time!! She hit the jackpot on the tickets!
Lilly, as you can imagine, was not overly thrilled that Lucy won all the loot. Fortunately Lucy agreed to share her tickets and everyone was able to acquire several pieces of worthless fodder. Lucy and Ben chose rubber snakes that "grow" when you soak them in warm water. Guess who gets to shower with snakes for the rest of the week. ME!
I think the BIGGEST news to come out of March would be Lucy losing her first tooth!! She had been wiggling and wiggling two different loose teeth forever (and ever and ever) and finally I just couldn't stand it anymore! Not to mention one of the teeth was practically sideways in her mouth -- it was SOOOOOO ready to come out! She does not have a high tolerance for pain, real or imagined, so it took longer than I would have liked, but she finally let me twist it out!
The Tooth Fairy came, left a note, some glitter, gum ball and a coin. Then she had to come back the very next week for the second tooth. Lucy was a bit more excited about mommy pulling that one. WHEW!
My first week as a single parent proved to be a busy one! Let me give you a sample of our weekly schedule: Monday and Tuesday were devoted to gymnastics; Every other Wednesday is Brownies for Lilly; Thursday and Fridays until the beginning of April are tutoring days for Lilly; Saturdays through the end of April is swimming. So, during the week, 4 out of 5 days we aren't home until 6pm. UGH!! The first Friday of my first full going-it-alone week the girls had karate graduation. They had been taking the class as part of an after-school enrichment program. They LOVED karate!! The graduation was held at the karate school near where Lilly had tutoring. They gave a demonstration of the things they had learned and then in order to get your white belt you had to break a board by kicking it. Both did a wonderful job!
The next morning we took off for swimming. It also happened to be the day before St. Patrick's day and Newport has a HUGE parade. Jim had been pressuring me all week to attend the parade since the kids had such a good time at it last year. The thought of taking them down there, trying to find a place to park and just dealing the crowds of people did not sound like a good time to me. Add in the fact that last year it was 60 degrees and this year the high was 40 and it made it even less appealing. However, Lucy had a piece of artwork that had been selected to be displayed in an art museum that was downtown. So I decided that if we could get to the museum and find somewhere to park we would check out the exhibit and then venture downtown to see some of the parade. First up the art exhibit. There were several examples of art from each Elementary school in Newport County.
We checked out the exhibit, which I am going to be honest, I was a little disappointed in. It wasn't in the main museum, rather over in a side building where the museum has art classes. But hey, whatever, Lucy was excited, she even got a ribbon. The most important thing to her was it was for her and not Lilly or Ben. Since we had a parking space and were only a few blocks from the parade, I decided we should at least walk down and check it out. So we did! Last year it was so warm, not so this year!! Brrrrr! I was freezing!! I told the kids we would stay for 1 hour. About 30 minutes into that promise I was wishing I had said 45 minutes.
Daddy had been bugging me all week on the phone to take the kids down to see the parade, so I called him and snapped a few pictures to prove we were there! Ha! See, mommy is fun too!
The Next day was St. Patrick's Day! I woke up early to set the stage for the Leprechaun's visit. I really am not a fan of that guy. He always messes up the house and throws shamrock confetti all over the place! But the kids totally buy into it because they know there is NO WAY Mommy is the one making all the mess. HA HA HA!
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| Leprechaun loot |
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| The house all messed up |
The big event of the day for me at least was running my first 1/2 Marathon! I had been running since before we even arrived in Rhode Island and my husband finally asked when I was going to do a race. Well I didn't really think I wanted to do one, but I came across a race 30 minutes away that looked do-able. But what really sold it to me was the medal they give you at the finish line had a whale on it. New Bedford, MA was a huge whaling town back in the day. Well, I wanted that medal! So I signed up, ran and at the end, they handed me this medal.
I looked down and saw whatever this is and I looked back up at the girl like "what is this!?!" She asked me if everything was alright and even though nothing was alright and everything was all WRONG, I forced myself to smile and say nothing. I had just ran 13.1 miles for a medal that was not a whale! Just my luck.
So life goes on. You get no whale medal, let it go! Spring has finally arrived in Jamestown and the kids have taken full advantage of it. They beg me to take them to the park every day! We are lucky if we get there once a week for maybe an hour. Daddy is convinced we don't miss him at all, but what I don't tell him is that I have all their time so scheduled that they don't have time to think. For the record, everyone misses Daddy very much! Everyone except maybe Oscar. He is really enjoying having that side of the bed to himself.
Up next on the calendar is my birthday!!! I love my birthday! I really do, except I don't really want to do anything crazy on my birthday. I also don't want a big to-do for it. Jim, however has other plans. He is plotting with the kids about what to do for me and has enlisted the aid of my friends that are here. I tell him to back off and he is stressing everyone out, but does he listen? - NO! He manages to make it special even though he is at the other end of the eastern seaboard. He is a good man. I am so lucky!
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| Tiny birthday cake fairy came! |
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| Happy Birthday Momma!! |
Man, the events keep piling up! I was kind of hoping my birthday would be the last thing to celebrate in March, but look out - EASTER! I am not sure that happened the last time. Palm Sunday sure, but Easter? Crazy!
I am apparently addicted to Pinterest, or at least that's what my husband thinks. It is just so much fun designing/furnishing a house I will never own, disciplining different children and revamping my clothes. I love it!! I did want to try out making hard boiled eggs in the oven and decided Easter was a perfect time!
It turned out pretty well. Some of the eggs had some brown spots on them, but hey, no biggie. Washed right off. But before we could dye them we had to pick up a very important package from the airport. Hee Hee. Jim was able to come home for Easter. We decided not to tell the kids because we wanted to surprise them. Really, I was afraid something would happen last minute and he wouldn't be able to come and then I would have to hear all the whining and crying. But the bottom line is it was a surprise!! I told them that I had gotten a phone call telling me to come pick up an "extremely large package." So Friday morning I got the kids in the car and we started heading north to the airport. Lilly started to get a tad suspicious once we got there and I didn't park the car. I fake-called the number on the fake email and pretended to talk to someone and said loud enough for them to hear me "Oh great, I will be waiting outside at the curb in front of the SouthWest Arrivals door". Lilly by this time was staring out the windshield asking a million questions. She then got quiet and said, "That man looks like Daddy. Oh my goodness IT IS DADDY!" He opened the door and the kids mobbed him. It was classic!!
The next morning was an Easter Egg Hunt, but really it was more like a candy grab. The baseball fields were sectioned off by age groups and when the alarm sounded the kids were free to pick up as much candy as they could until it was all gone. My kind of Easter Egg Hunt. We thought about getting a picture with the Easter Bunny, but he was the strangest Easter Bunny I have ever seen, so we steered clear. First year that I haven't gotten a picture of them with the Easter Bunny. I am kind of bummed.
When we got home from the candy grab I turned the egg dying process over to Daddy. I believe this is the first year he has been around on the day we did it. So he was in for a treat!! HA HA HA. When I took these pictures, all the eggs looked so pretty! I had hopes that we would FINALLY have good looking eggs for Easter. Usually the kids are so impatient with the dying process that they end up dunking them into all the colors and our eggs end up brown.
When I came back about 15 minutes later, all the eggs were ... brown. Gross. Oh well, maybe next year!
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| Thanks Easter Bunny! |
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| Doesn't Lucy looked thrilled! HA HA HA |
We made it to church and then down the street for a quick lunch with our new friends the Monclovas before we had to take Daddy back to the airport for a 3:00 departure. Before Jim left we discovered that the fridge/freezer was dying a slow death. So late Sunday I was packing up all the stuff in a putting it in borrowed coolers on the porch. Nothing like camping in your own house!! But I don't want to steal thunder from April. So you will have to wait until next month for that story.
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